But then it dawned on me – I’ve never taken the time to write any of this incredible information down to share with other marketers!

Well, I’m happy to change that. We thought it’d be great to share all the awesome insight we’re lucky to glean from the world’s best social media marketers, starting with this simple (and fascinating, revealing, inspiring) question:

What is the biggest project you’re working on?

We surveyed and spoke with more than 150 of the world’s best social media managers and put together a selection of 75 answers here.

Much love to the authors of this Medium post for inspiring us to write this article!

Today’s biggest social media projects

Huge thank yous to all the social media managers who responded to our survey. If you happen to spend time sharing to social for your business or brand, it’d be great to hear your thoughts in the comments here, too!

It was inspiring and motivating to see all the answers, from 150 marketers! (Many of the people I spoke with told me that they too wondered what other social media managers were up to.)

Below you’ll find all their answers. I hope it might give you a bit of inspiration from what everyone is working on, and further down we’re excited to share how we plan to put these learnings into action at Buffer.

The breakdown of social media projects

From a high level, here are some graphs that explain the types of projects that social media managers are working on at the moment. Keep reading to see each individual response after this section of charts.

More than 25% of social media managers said their #1 project was content creation.

Other themes included:

Increasing engagement

Growing an audience

Scheduling content

Event planning

While there was a lot of focus on content, very little of it seemed to be video content.

Only 6 out of 150 social media managers mentioned video among their biggest projects.

On the flip side, one big theme of the content, planning, and strategic projects was social media ads.

A whopping 33 out of 150 social media managers mentioned “paid advertising” in their biggest projects for the week.

What social media managers are working on right now (the complete list)

Chelsea Hunersen, HubSpot – Creating a great content plan for the rest of June (a.k.a. the end of Q2).

We’re excited to be working with Chelsea and the Hubspot team on a Social Media Master Class to explore we’re they’re thinking about social media marketing in 2016, 2017, and beyond. Looking to stay ahead of the curve with your social media strategy? Click here to reserve your seat.

Sam Rye, Social Labs – Testing interest in a new online course we may/may not launch soon!

Jane and the IFTTT team are working on a bunch of great things in social media including new brand partnerships as well as ways that social media managers can use automation to increase their productivity.

Stephen Banham, Richmond Events – Handing over documents and transitioning as I leave the company.

Erik and the Social Media Examiner team run a really neat Friday roundup with all the latest social media news. The roundup includes social network updates, new tools and apps, and a look ahead into where social media might be going (and how we marketers can stay ahead of the curve).

Dani Beach, Springbot – A/B testing Twitter Ads and finding ways to increase the number of customers that follow us.

Marie Geffroy, Manyatta – Driving traffic to our website from social media and other marketing channels.

Tres Kennedy, Kill Cliff – Creating new and awesome content for all of our social media channels.

Ashley Williams, Etna Interactive – I am preparing a ‘how to use Snapchat for business’ presentation for our staff. Our clients are quickly moving to the platform, so I want to make sure we are trained and ready to offer support.

Emily Triplett, The Make It Snappy Productivity Show – Interacting with our audience, increasing engagement and building connections with followers to increase mentions.

Hamish Anderson, Mesh Consulting – Developing a framework which articulates how people can best respond to comments and posts on their social accounts to ensure the best result.

Brandon Bautista, Michigan Virtual University – Reporting for last month’s social media activity.

Kory Bowlin, Bluewolf, an IBM Company – Creating great content people engage with.

Takeaways: Projects that inspired us (and lessons we learned)

I found it super interesting that social media managers from around the world have many of the same projects in common. Creating awesome content, driving traffic to company websites from social media, and scheduling out plenty of content in advance were a few recurring themes throughout.

There were so many great projects here. These were just a few that caught our eye (and might lead to us working on something similar):

Preparing campaigns for product announcements

Creating a content / social calendar

Educating others on Snapchat

Testing native video

Optimizing paid ads to get a better cost-per-click

One interesting learning from this survey is that there weren’t too many social media managers working on video production as one of their top projects. In a recent research study, we found video to be one of the biggest trends in social for gaining more engagement, and it seems like the opportunity is still there for brands to make a splash before video reaches the saturation point.

The second major takeaway that came about from talking with these incredible talented social media managers is that time management and task prioritization are becoming increasingly important. Social media managers’ day-to-day duties are continually increasing and so it’s more important than ever to work smarter, not harder. A good lesson we’d love to take to heart at Buffer!

What are your biggest projects this week?

Thank you so much for reading! It was a huge privilege to be able to chat with and learn from all of these amazing social media managers. I hope their answers sparked a little creative inspiration and helped to guide where your social media strategy may go next.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below! What are the biggest, most important projects you’re working on this week?